


Oh, best beloved...

by oddegg



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddegg/pseuds/oddegg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the reboot kink meme, for supercrook's prompt: <em>five traditional morals to five traditional stories Nero will never share with his children.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, best beloved...

**Author's Note:**

> I thought this prompt was beautiful, so I hope I managed to come close to doing it justice. Most of the traditional tales I've used are morphs of already existing ones from various cultures. Further notes at the end.

It was one of the oldest tales on Romulus, and almost the shortest he knew. Nero had told it once to the owner of a spaceport bar he'd frequented in the Hobus system, years ago, a life time ago, when he had been a different man.

It had been late, late into the night, when the bar had quietened and the ale had made his blood heavy and languorous. He had told the bald, silvery skinned innkeeper about the legend of the _Avidefides_, the raptor bird that loomed so large in his people's history.

"Its young strike at it in the nest, and the parent bird – it strikes back, and wounds them. And then, when it sees what it has done, it feels such grief that it rams its beak into its own breast, and its blood feeds and heals its young as the parent dies" He'd taken another swig of his drink and added fondly "It is the most basic tale there is. It is the first tale we tell our children"

The woman had slowly blinked thin, opaque lids over her pale eyes and said in low, accented Romulan  
"It does not sound a pleasant tale for a child"

Nero had tipped his head to the side, puzzled, but hadn't stopped her as she drifted off to serve another customer. His thoughts had drifted to Mandana, to the news she had given him just before this current mining run; whispering it in his ear in the still of their last night together, her voice bubbling and breathless with joy.

He would tell the tale to his own child; the old, old tale of young, and how they could strike at you and tear at your heart and how, even if you loosed your anger against them, they were yours. They were yours, and you loved them, with your last breath, your last pulse of blood, and that you would do anything – _anything_ – for them.

 

* *

 

Ayel's cool hand on his face is soothing and so Nero turns away.

He does not want any moment of this to be gentle. He wants to feel every painful moment of it.

His own slow, controlled breathing is all he can hear for a long time, and then there is the quiet noise of his second again picking up the cutting tool from the bench beside him. Nero hears the dip, the slight pause as the tiny drip of excess ink is shed, and then he clenches his teeth as the harsh, stinging cut is made again at his temple, continuing the design.

He remembers the father of his father, tracing with childish fingers the marks on the man's wrinkled cheek and asking 'what?' Why?

_'It is the old way. It is the way that Utong taught our people, away back in the beginning of the beginning, so that we can pass into the underworld and meet our loved ones again. The mark that will not wash off, and will show them who we are, and that we remembered them'_

The old man's fingers had trembled as he stroked the embroidered border of the cloak he had worn, woven by a wife long dead before Nero had even been born, and he continued his tale of long ago.

Ayel makes a second cruel slice on his face, a third, and Nero gazes upward with dry, unblinking eyes and does not make a sound.

 

* *

 

Nero's mind goes in the twelfth year.

He is running through armed defence patterns with Ayel when he dodges back to avoid a thrust, glances at the wickedly sharp edge of his narinata blade and thinks that his son would now be of an age to receive his first dulled practice weapon.

He breaks. Between one moment and the next the props that have been holding up his mind and will go – as swiftly as those in a mine are exploded away if the gas of the firedamp catches.

The narinata falls from his slack hand and his knees give way, and he would have gone to the floor right on top of the blade if Ayel had not leapt forward and caught him as he fell.

Ayel had broken earlier. Years ago in the early days of their waiting, he had fallen and Nero had held him then as his friend had sobbed harshly for his own dead, his own loved one. _'I cannot, I cannot… how can I go on? How can my heart beat still without him? And we do nothing here, **nothing!** We will never get our revenge!'_

Nero had held him then, and rocked him, and murmured into his tattooed temple the fable of the desert orbweaver and the duneback. Over and over as his raving quietened he told Ayel the story of how the quick, sharp toothed duneback had passed by the orbweaver as it softly and oh-so slowly spun and built its home and had mocked; telling it that he was eating well, snapping up lots of prey while the orbweaver toiled and hungered. How after many months the duneback had wandered forgetfully near the orbweaver's home and been caught in the sticky, near invisible threads of the trap the weaver had set there. As he struggled and strained, wearing himself out, the orbweaver had come out of his hiding and said as he crept closer, fanged mouth opening:  
_'Ah, and now, my talkative friend, now **I** get to eat!'_

Ayel tells the tale back to him now, as Nero gasps and shakes himself to pieces on his knees, and the parts of Nero's mind that are fragmenting off in all directions somehow pick up its message behind the screaming pain and hurt that is howling inside him, hollowing him out –

_'Patience. Patience. We **will** win out in the end. We will get our revenge and fatten ourselves on it. Patience…'_

 

* *

 

So Ayel stands guard for him through the long months as Nero slowly finds his way back to himself. Gathers his scattered pieces and braces his inner walls up again; a task that is more difficult than it should be, even when he finds that solid, central stoop of rage at his core – a pillar that never faltered and which he could build around, shoring up his workings with memories of betrayal and anger and deep, deep pain sounding like knocking away inside.

Some times he is almost himself, and can be his crew's captain, their leader. But some days he feels like he's flying apart again or that he's lost down in dark tunnels with the after-damp creeping up to smother him. At those times Ayel is his brattice, stands between him and the crew, tells the men that he will speak for Nero.

Nero hides away on those days; paces the floor, snarls at Spock, cries for Mandana, talks to his lost, unborn boy and tells him stories of the history of Romulus, of gods and monsters and heroes like Duathor and Feronee, who fought back to back against a hundred, a thousand of their enemies to protect the Empress and endured. Won through and won their place in the high ranks of power and remained closer than kin to the end of their days.

He lurks in the dark shadows of his own ship and watches Ayel snarl a too-curious crewmate back to his station when the man turns inquisitive eyes to where his captain should be sitting. Watches and whispers the end of that last tale to the unhearing, hovering shade of his child.

_'For all things are possible, when the brother of your heart is by your side'_

 

* *

 

He roars his defiance at their unbearable, sneering charity – would make his wrath and hate for them a spear and send it crashing out through space to destroy them if he could.

He screams his refusal and damns himself, damns his crew. The viewer blinks off and he meets the eyes of Eigo, his second helmsman. The man had occasionally tried and tested Nero's command through the years – made parries that Ayel had usually headed off.

But Ayel is gone now, gone before; his way hastened by that smirking, despised Terran, and Eigo has no treachery, no underhandedness left. His body broken and dying, he still has energy left to grin sharply up at Nero, blood leaking out through his teeth to add to the coppery green smear on his chin as he quotes with low humour  
"_'You forget, the sting is in my nature – even to the end'_ – isn't that right, captain?"

The most basic of tales, that none who were not below the Raptor's wing ever understood was a joke, a message of fierce pride as well. A bladetail – a deathstalker insect – is trapped on a rock in the middle of a flooding river. A man comes by in a boat and, pity rising in him, puts out his hand to the animal. The bladetail stings him and the man collapses back, stricken, crying _'I would have saved you! And now we both must die!'_ And the bladetail replies _'You forget…'_

Nero watches, expressionless, as Eigo's eyes glaze over, and then sits back in his chair. Watches calm and easy as his ship shakes and explodes and tears herself apart around him.

Yes. They forget, those others – Nero and his crew are Romulan. They stand – and they die – alone, and will lash at an offering hand from any who are not one of them.

They are Romulan, and the sting is in their nature. Even to the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Sadder than a very sad thing to have a glossary on what was originally a comment fic, but I used some old mining terms here which you might not know. So:  
> Firedamp: methane gas naturally found in coal seams - highly inflammable and explosive.   
> After-damp: gas left after an explosion containing a large quantity of carbon monoxide  
> Brattice: partition in mine to regulate ventilation or support sides or roof  
> Stoop: A broad pillar of coal or any other mineral left in to support the roof of a working  
> Knocking: A system of signalling used in the mines
> 
> And for those curious, the tales I used and mangles beyond recognition here were, in order of appearance:  
>  \- The pelican tears at its own breast  
>  \- Mataora and Niwareka in the Underworld  
>  \- A mash-up of Tortoise and the Hare and Ant and the Grasshopper  
>  \- Christ, Who The Fuck Knows (Romulus &amp; Remus? With a bit of Alan Garner thrown in?)  
>  \- The Scorpion and the Frog
> 
> I have subverted, misinterpreted and, in some cases, completely made up the morals of these tales.


End file.
